Read Online We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Philip Gourevitch
Tags: nonfiction, History
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mouth, and I couldn’t swallow it. The boys shouted, ‘Get up, Tutsis. All the Tutsis stand up.’ There was a boy from my hill at home. We went to primary school together, and he said, ‘You, Odette, you sit down, we know you’ve been a Hutu forever.’ Then some other boy came and pulled my hair and said, ‘With this hair we know you’re a Tutsi.’”
Hair was one of the great signifiers for John Hanning Speke. When he identified a king as a member of the Hamitic master race, Speke pronounced him a descendant “from Abyssinia and King David, whose hair was as straight as my own,” and the king, flattered, said, yes, there was a story that his ancestors had “once been half white and half black, with hair on the white side straight, and on the black side frizzly.” Odette was neither tall nor especially skinny, and on the “nasal index” she was probably about average for a Rwandan. But such was Speke’s legacy that a hundred years after he shot himself in a “hunting accident,” a schoolboy in Rwanda tormented Odette because she liked to wear her hair combed back in soft waves. “And,” she went on, “the director of the school, a Belgian woman, said of me, ‘Yes, her, she’s a Tutsi of the first category, take her.’ So we were expelled. Nobody was killed there. Some girls were spat at in the face, and made to walk on their knees, and some were beaten. Then we left on foot.”
All across Rwanda, Tutsi students were being beaten and expelled, and many of them walked home to find their houses burning. The trouble this time had been inspired by events in Burundi, where the political landscape appeared very much like Rwanda’s through a bloody looking glass: in Burundi, a Tutsi military regime held power and Hutus feared for their lives. In the spring of 1972 some Burundian Hutus had attempted a rebellion, which was quickly put down. Then, in the name of restoring “peace and order,” the army conducted a nationwide campaign of extermination against educated Hutus, in which a lot of unschooled Hutus were murdered as well. The genocidal frenzy in Burundi exceeded anything that had preceded it in Rwanda. At least a hundred thousand Burundian Hutus were killed in the spring of 1972, and at least two hundred thousand fled as refugees—many of them to Rwanda.
The influx of Burundian refugees reminded President Kayibanda of the power of ethnic antagonism to galvanize the civic spirit. Rwanda was stagnating in poverty and isolation, and it needed a boost. So Kayibanda asked his army chief, Major General Juvénal Habyarimana, to organize Committees of Public Safety, and Tutsis were once again reminded what majority rule meant in Rwanda. The death toll this time was relatively low—“only,” as Rwandans count these things, in the hundreds—but at least a hundred thousand more Tutsis fled Rwanda as refugees.
When Odette spoke of 1973, she didn’t mention Burundi, or Kayibanda’s political fortunes, or the mass exodus. These circumstances did not figure in her memory. She stuck to her story, which was enough: One morning, while she had her mouth full of bread, her world had once again collapsed because she was Tutsi. “We were six girls, chased out of my school,” she told me. “I had my sack, and we walked.” After three days they had covered fifty miles, and arrived in Kibuye. Odette had relatives there—“a sister of my brother-in-law who had married a Hutu”—and she figured she would stay with them.
“This man had a sharpening business,” she said. “I found him in front of his house at his grinding stone. At first, he ignored me. I thought, Is he drunk? Doesn’t he see who is here? I said, ‘It’s me, Odette.’ He said, ‘Why are you here? It’s school season.’ I said, ‘But we’ve been expelled.’ Then he said, ‘I don’t give shelter to cockroaches.’ That’s what he said. My sister-in-law came along and she embraced me, and”—Odette clapped her hands together over
Hair was one of the great signifiers for John Hanning Speke. When he identified a king as a member of the Hamitic master race, Speke pronounced him a descendant “from Abyssinia and King David, whose hair was as straight as my own,” and the king, flattered, said, yes, there was a story that his ancestors had “once been half white and half black, with hair on the white side straight, and on the black side frizzly.” Odette was neither tall nor especially skinny, and on the “nasal index” she was probably about average for a Rwandan. But such was Speke’s legacy that a hundred years after he shot himself in a “hunting accident,” a schoolboy in Rwanda tormented Odette because she liked to wear her hair combed back in soft waves. “And,” she went on, “the director of the school, a Belgian woman, said of me, ‘Yes, her, she’s a Tutsi of the first category, take her.’ So we were expelled. Nobody was killed there. Some girls were spat at in the face, and made to walk on their knees, and some were beaten. Then we left on foot.”
All across Rwanda, Tutsi students were being beaten and expelled, and many of them walked home to find their houses burning. The trouble this time had been inspired by events in Burundi, where the political landscape appeared very much like Rwanda’s through a bloody looking glass: in Burundi, a Tutsi military regime held power and Hutus feared for their lives. In the spring of 1972 some Burundian Hutus had attempted a rebellion, which was quickly put down. Then, in the name of restoring “peace and order,” the army conducted a nationwide campaign of extermination against educated Hutus, in which a lot of unschooled Hutus were murdered as well. The genocidal frenzy in Burundi exceeded anything that had preceded it in Rwanda. At least a hundred thousand Burundian Hutus were killed in the spring of 1972, and at least two hundred thousand fled as refugees—many of them to Rwanda.
The influx of Burundian refugees reminded President Kayibanda of the power of ethnic antagonism to galvanize the civic spirit. Rwanda was stagnating in poverty and isolation, and it needed a boost. So Kayibanda asked his army chief, Major General Juvénal Habyarimana, to organize Committees of Public Safety, and Tutsis were once again reminded what majority rule meant in Rwanda. The death toll this time was relatively low—“only,” as Rwandans count these things, in the hundreds—but at least a hundred thousand more Tutsis fled Rwanda as refugees.
When Odette spoke of 1973, she didn’t mention Burundi, or Kayibanda’s political fortunes, or the mass exodus. These circumstances did not figure in her memory. She stuck to her story, which was enough: One morning, while she had her mouth full of bread, her world had once again collapsed because she was Tutsi. “We were six girls, chased out of my school,” she told me. “I had my sack, and we walked.” After three days they had covered fifty miles, and arrived in Kibuye. Odette had relatives there—“a sister of my brother-in-law who had married a Hutu”—and she figured she would stay with them.
“This man had a sharpening business,” she said. “I found him in front of his house at his grinding stone. At first, he ignored me. I thought, Is he drunk? Doesn’t he see who is here? I said, ‘It’s me, Odette.’ He said, ‘Why are you here? It’s school season.’ I said, ‘But we’ve been expelled.’ Then he said, ‘I don’t give shelter to cockroaches.’ That’s what he said. My sister-in-law came along and she embraced me, and”—Odette clapped her hands together over
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